This had me sobbing. Was I crying more for Muriel, or for her mom? Probably equal heartbreak for both 😭 Thank you for researching this, and for all the wonderful work you do!!! I appreciate you, and am grateful for you ❤️ Xoxox
That was fascinating and so moving! You are definitely the cool aunt, even if your niece may not recognize it yet. And I’m always delighted to find you rooting around in the 17th century. It feels like a quiet high five amidst the gloriously weird archives of that time.
Thanks for sharing this story - and I'm so excited about the essay. So much clicked into place for me - about whiteness, the U.S. (South especially) and my family - when I learned more about how Scotland and Ireland figured into this whole plantation/colonization thing! So baffled why we don't learn even a whiff of that part in school. Plus it makes watching Derry Girls much more...intense.
I loved this story and loved hearing about your process. I want to support your deep work. I wanted to share that it doesn't matter to me how often essays come out, to me it doesn't have to be every week.
All we need is a campfire & marshmallows. This would be an interesting fireside chat, seemed odd listening to it on a sunny day. A spooky night with a full moon perhaps.
In college history classes I had a hard time contributing to discussions because I was slow. I didn’t have immediate answers, and I felt that was a shortcoming I needed to improve or that made me defective. Now I’ve realized it’s my strength. I can let ideas and questions incubate in me, letting them mix, adding more, work on themselves over *decades* without the need to have them be solved.
I don’t have experience with business from the business side, Meg. I *do* know from the other side what it is that I care about and want and want to support. It’s the Meggyness that makes up your writing. School was trying to promote algorithmic qualities in us, but we don’t need that; we have algorithms for that. However it is that you work, that’s your strength. Your thinking, your exploration is worth it. It brings... the unexpected.
Some time when you have nothing else to do.... It would be super interesting to learn about your research methods. For example, you noted that you were looking at original source materials. Where do you find those?
I do a lot of research and writing in my job but almost always on some kind of deadline. So if something isn’t available immediately online, I end up abandoning that branch and moving on.
Do you go get actual books? How do you find answers to your questions about things that happened centuries ago?
I don’t think that even without deadlines I would have the patience to follow through, but I am intensely curious about the process. 🙂
My family's from Scotland. The earliest with my last name lived in the 1600s in what would then have been a township called Wester Cardno. Fast forward a few generations and the highland clearances came. Ancestors moved to the city, to England, and some to Australia, Canada, and the US, where they in turn dispossessed indigenous populations. I'll be writing much more about this in the coming weeks and months.
This had me sobbing. Was I crying more for Muriel, or for her mom? Probably equal heartbreak for both 😭 Thank you for researching this, and for all the wonderful work you do!!! I appreciate you, and am grateful for you ❤️ Xoxox
Whew. Fascinating. Intense. I was deeply thinking about you this morning, fyi.
This was such a joy to listen to - thank you for the voicemail ❤️
Is there any way we can get a transcript? I would much rather read. Thank you ❤
That was fascinating and so moving! You are definitely the cool aunt, even if your niece may not recognize it yet. And I’m always delighted to find you rooting around in the 17th century. It feels like a quiet high five amidst the gloriously weird archives of that time.
Thanks for sharing this story - and I'm so excited about the essay. So much clicked into place for me - about whiteness, the U.S. (South especially) and my family - when I learned more about how Scotland and Ireland figured into this whole plantation/colonization thing! So baffled why we don't learn even a whiff of that part in school. Plus it makes watching Derry Girls much more...intense.
I loved this story and loved hearing about your process. I want to support your deep work. I wanted to share that it doesn't matter to me how often essays come out, to me it doesn't have to be every week.
All we need is a campfire & marshmallows. This would be an interesting fireside chat, seemed odd listening to it on a sunny day. A spooky night with a full moon perhaps.
In college history classes I had a hard time contributing to discussions because I was slow. I didn’t have immediate answers, and I felt that was a shortcoming I needed to improve or that made me defective. Now I’ve realized it’s my strength. I can let ideas and questions incubate in me, letting them mix, adding more, work on themselves over *decades* without the need to have them be solved.
I don’t have experience with business from the business side, Meg. I *do* know from the other side what it is that I care about and want and want to support. It’s the Meggyness that makes up your writing. School was trying to promote algorithmic qualities in us, but we don’t need that; we have algorithms for that. However it is that you work, that’s your strength. Your thinking, your exploration is worth it. It brings... the unexpected.
Some time when you have nothing else to do.... It would be super interesting to learn about your research methods. For example, you noted that you were looking at original source materials. Where do you find those?
I do a lot of research and writing in my job but almost always on some kind of deadline. So if something isn’t available immediately online, I end up abandoning that branch and moving on.
Do you go get actual books? How do you find answers to your questions about things that happened centuries ago?
I don’t think that even without deadlines I would have the patience to follow through, but I am intensely curious about the process. 🙂
My family's from Scotland. The earliest with my last name lived in the 1600s in what would then have been a township called Wester Cardno. Fast forward a few generations and the highland clearances came. Ancestors moved to the city, to England, and some to Australia, Canada, and the US, where they in turn dispossessed indigenous populations. I'll be writing much more about this in the coming weeks and months.